Aidan circles and circles to find somewhere to park as near as he can to the accident scene. He keeps a hand on my arm as he drives slow and reaches over every time that he brakes. It’s kind of like the sudden stops where he sticks his hand out like that’s going to keep me in place if we crash. It’s always kind of cute when he does it, but I don’t think it’s cute now. I think the last time I saw him look this scared we were single digits still.
“Okay,” he says. He lets me go and shifts the car into park. Aidan looks over at me before saying, “Okay,” again and taking the key out of the ignition.
He gets out of the car without taking his eyes off me, and I decide to keep sitting there. He glances around some but doesn’t turn his head from me as he quickly walks around the back of the car. He is terrified to take his eyes off me now that I’ve started talking to Cain. I wonder if he thinks I’m going to become Cain again, try to kill him or fuck him again. I keep sitting right where he left me, exactly how he left me, so he knows I’ll cooperate. Only once he’s in front of the passenger door do I reach for the handle, but he beats me to it.
The door swings open as if Aidan were my chauffeur or maybe more accurately my bodyguard. He steps back so I can get out of the car, and he seems ready to grab my arm or maybe just tackle me if I try to move too quickly away from him.
I decide to take hold of his hand, as if we were still stupidly small, and I’d feel silly except for the way it obviously makes him feel better. He is just so scared that I’m going to run away on him. He keeps a tight grip on my hand as we stand on the curb waiting to dart across the street for a better look at the accident scene. His brows are together, his mouth is turned down, Aidan focuses intently on watching the cars as he looks left, right, left again, back to the right, once more to the left.
“Okay. After this truck. Ready? Now,” he says. “Let’s hurry, okay?”
I think he might cut off the circulation to my fingers as he clamps down on my hand and pulls me after him into the street. I match his awkward burst of a fast-jog to get across to the opposing sidewalk. There’s not a car anywhere on the road coming at us, but we run anyway.
Aidan walks me a little ways down to where the ramp is in sight. I cup the side of my hand into my brow to block the crisp chill daylight and stare at the normal-enough looking wreck. The pickup’s been hauled away, but the utility van has puttered into the shoulder or been dragged there.
I see the mom-cop mill around with another police officer pointing at the road or gesturing. The motorcycle is still there but no sign of the driver, no silent-spinning ambulance lights just more cops and emergency crews to get the road cleared. As we watch someone starts pushing broken glass aside with a broom. In a few more hours it’ll be like nothing ever happened.
At my side I hear Aidan say quietly, “The body’s probably at the hospital by now.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I know,” I say. “I know.”
I don’t know what else to say, because Cain’s going to hear it. He’s going to know just what a terrible mess of things I’ve made. I don’t blame Aidan for being scared. This is an incredibly scary thing that I’ve done. I am terrified to admit to Cain that I’ve lost the body I found for him, or rather I guess I’ve lost the body that he found me in.
I drop my voice to a whisper. “Cain?”
Yo.
His rasping weak voice cuts through me even though he’s soft about it, barely audible and so faint it scares me. He doesn’t even sound sarcastic anymore. I can’t stop thinking about after Cain took over my body he kept looking at the sky and clenching his fist with everything hurting.
I speak quietly, murmuring the words as gently as I can. “Cain, I don’t know where you are. You’re not here. Or, I do know where you are — you’re probably at the nearest hospital. Um.”
I pull my hand free of Aidan so I can get out my phone. He glances around to make sure no one except him is near as I start talking to a voice only I can hear. I tap quickly to search on the map for the nearest hospital but already know that’s not good enough because there’s three total with two nearly equidistant from where I’m standing by the wreck.
“I’m sorry,” I say to Cain. “I didn’t mean to – to have it be like this.”
I told you to keep it clean. Big messy wreck with police and shit ain’t clean.
“I know. I know, I’m sorry.” I switch apps on my phone and start typing searches into the browser to try finding a news article on the wreck. “What happened though? Why are you stuck? Can you move at all?”
There is such a long pause that I see Aidan lose interest and start messing around on his phone. I lean forward on the pedestrian safety rail along the sidewalk and peer down at the crash site like that’ll possibly help me help Cain.
I fucking hate you.
There’s no heat to it, no anger. I don’t know how to interpret the sulky silence that follows, and I’m not finding anything on my phone to help me either. I feel at the scar on my lip with my tongue and try to fight the panicky urge to keep apologizing to Cain. I’ve never heard someone sound this tormented and hurt. I’ve really fucked this up and know it.
I stick the phone back in my pocket and turn to Aidan. “I need my laptop.” I look back at the car and squint against the afternoon sun. “I need my laptop from the house.”
“Okay,” says Aidan. “Sure.”
I start for the car, but he snatches my hand again before I get too close to the curb. He doesn’t say wait for me like when we were little kids, but I wait for him anyway. I let him decide when we’re going to dart across the street, too, so he can look back and forth carefully and check that it’s clear.
Back in the car Aidan checks his phone before starting to drive. He glances in the rearview mirror at the blue-red flash of the police lights. “What are you going to do?” he asks me.
I shrug and glance out the window at nothing. “Find out who that motorcyclist was, I guess, and try to get information on the crash. I need to figure out which hospital has Cain.”
Aidan gets quiet and focuses just on driving for a while. At last he asks, “Want to grab something to eat on the way?”
“Yeah,” I say softly. “Sure.”
His desire to ask me what kind of food or where we should stop is nearly palpable, but he’s quiet. We’re both quiet. I’m still looking out the window, even though what I’m really doing is trying to listen for Cain.
If it hurts him to talk I don’t want to keep pestering him, but I don’t know what to do if he won’t answer my questions and has stopped telling me what to do. I don’t know what it means that he says he’s stuck and can’t move, but it’s obviously not a good thing. Nothing about this is good.
“I’ll stop for gas,” Aidan decides. “We can get sandwiches at the same time.”
I murmur something agreeable and shift to get comfortable against the door. I know Aidan’s sitting over there thinking of what he really wants to say. I’m sure it’s something about Cain, about the crash and the body. I can probably guess what he wants to say. I should have listened to him in the first place, even if I didn’t kill anything to bring Cain back.
Aidan turns into the gas station and circles to get in position at one of the pumps. He hops out to swipe his card and punch through the options on the payment screen but abandons that effort soon as he sees me getting out of the car. He’s halfway around the car and coming at me like it’s going to be a tackle, so I get deliberately way too slow and reassuring.
“I’ll go inside to get the sandwiches,” I say.
He looks less ready to tackle me but doesn’t stop coming toward me. “It’s fine,” he says quickly. He doesn’t grab my arm but looks like he wants to, even though I’m standing there passive and cooperative.
There’s not much puppy-dog about his big, brown eyes as Aidan glances between the pump, the car, me, and the gas station with its big wrap-around windows. He looks more like an attack dog, my new fierce bodyguard who is terrified of letting me out of his sight. He hastily feels at the lump of the keys in his pocket and then shifts his hand over to feel at the rectangular bump of his phone as well.
“I’ll get the sandwiches. You pump the gas,” he decides. “Stay with the car.”
“Okay.” I take a step away from him only so I can get closer to the pump. He takes a step back toward the gas station with matched caution. I glance aside, shuffle, get nearer to the pump and take the nozzle off the handle.
Aidan looks between me and the gas station again like he’s regretting this decision. He tries to keep an eye on me as he heads inside, and then those big windows let us trade stares as he gets in line to order us lunch while I stand there listening for the click of the nozzle once the tank’s filled. Posters and advertisements clog up the windows, so Aidan’s not subtle at all as he goes up on tip-toe and leans funnily to make sure he doesn’t sight of me.
Once the tank’s full, I go tell the payment screen there’s no need for a receipt. The nozzle clatters back into place, and I get back into place as well. Hopefully it’ll reassure Aidan all the more to see me get back into the car to wait for him. I’m sitting down, I’m buckled, the doors are locked.
I lean forward to better watch Aidan as he’s at the register trying to pay without taking his eyes off me and the car long. He juggles the bag holding our sandwiches into the same hand that’s holding a soda and then digs out his phone. I see him glance up to check on me before he looks down at his phone and moves his thumb over the screen. He checks on me again and then lifts the phone to his ear.
“Shit.”
Break a nail, sweetheart?
Nice as it is to hear Cain regain some of his sarcasm, I’m short with him as I snap, “No. Shut up,” because I think I’ve figured out why my phone’s been silent all day. By now the school definitely would have contacted my parents about me skipping, and the only explanation for why my mother isn’t blowing up my phone with worry is that she already knows where I am.
I think quickly and try to recall if I’d seen Aidan using his phone, but of course he has been. Suddenly him deciding to leave me with the car while he goes inside makes sense, because if our positions were reversed then I wouldn’t be sitting here waiting for him. I’d be walking back with the sandwiches, and he wouldn’t have enough time to make a phone call where I can’t hear him talk.
I yank open the lock and shove the door open. I told Aidan I wanted my laptop, that I needed to go to my house to get it, and I’d bet anything that Aidan’s on the phone with my mom right now telling her to move her car, get out of the house, make it look safe so they can make it a trap. Get me inside, get me away from Cain even though I don’t even know where he is yet. I’m on the sidewalk when Aidan first shouts for me, so I break into a run.
“Ethan!”
His second shriek is closer, so much closer, and I try to skid to a halt before he barrels straight into me. The soda goes flying out of his hand as he lowers his shoulder to take me hard in the chest. The bag holding the sandwiches sails into the air. Aidan slams me into the grass behind the dumpster like he’s expecting a fight, but I’m passive and go down easy for such a full-body tackle.
Aidan’s hands clench into my sweatshirt. “Okay!” I yelp. I squirm only because he’s trying to wrangle on top of me to pin me down. “Okay, I’m sorry. Sorry.”
His fingers are trembling as they snatch and bunch the excess fabric of my hoodie. “Fuck,” he breathes. Aidan leans in for a moment to stare close at my face, and I wonder frantically what he thinks he’s going to see.
He pulls back and then shifts to crouch on his heels without letting me go all the way. “Fuck,” he says again. He watches the soda roll further down the sidewalk as he catches his breath and smears the tears off his cheeks. “Ethan, I’m not stupid. I was making sure your mom wasn’t at home first. I’m covering for you. I – I’ve been covering for you. You don’t have to run. I’m not going to turn you in or anything.”
He claws together more of my sweatshirt before finding my hand again. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I started texting my mom last night. I didn’t want her to worry, you know? I told them — my mom, your mom, I just said I was with you. I said we’d gone out of town, that you wanted to and I – I said I went along to keep you safe. Which is kind of true, I guess.”
He looks frustrated, scared, I’m genuinely sorry for him that his nice best friend isn’t just crazy. I’m not crazy, I’m not a delinquent. I’m something nightmarish and unexplainable. I speak to demons, I see dead things, talk to them, bring them back, I don’t even know what all I can do except Aidan knows I’m not crazy or lying, I’m not making this up.
His parents divorced when he was six and his mom remarried two years later, whisking him into a new school, new house, new town, new dad, new little sister — and me. A new best friend. An entire childhood of being best friends who spent a lot of time just hanging around studying and doing homework, two nice kids our moms didn’t have to worry about much. Of the two of us I always got into more trouble — simple, stupid problems like minute long phone calls, giggling a bit too loud while pretending to be asleep during sleepovers, sometimes scraping my knee or maybe just spending too much time on the internet.
Now I’ve run off from everyone except Aidan, and he keeps a firm hold of my hand so I won’t do the same to him. “Yeah,” I say. “Okay, sure, no — I’m sorry. I won’t run. I just, I thought — I’m sorry.” Cautiously I get sitting upright without letting go of Aidan. I think he’d tackle me back down again if I tried to free my hand.
Aidan shakes his head and gets to his feet. He pulls me up with him and looks me over with concern in case I smashed anything on myself in the fall. He squeezes my hand before letting go. He picks up our fresh-flown lunch and the shaken-rolled soda. He brings them back to where I’m standing and offers me a sandwich. I roll back the somewhat smushed together wrap of paper to get a big bite. Aidan watches me just holding the plastic bag with his sandwich still inside.
“Come on,” he says. “I need to move the car from the pump.”
I speak around a mouthful of lunch. “Okay.”
He waits for me to start walking back before following. I get back into the passenger seat and he climbs into driver’s side. Aidan glances back to check the nozzle’s out of the car and the gas tank is closed before he starts up the car. The locks jolt into place as he rolls forward.
“D’you want your sandwich?” I ask.
“In a minute,” he says. “Don’t open that soda.”
“I won’t.” I keep eating my sandwich to prove to him I’ll cooperate again. “Sorry,” I say. “You promise you’re not going to turn me in?”
“Yes. Yes, I promise. Ethan, it’s fine. We’re going to get your laptop.” He checks to make sure I’m buckled, the doors are locked, he has us moving. His hand hovers near my arm anyway. “But you’re not trying to get a body out of the morgue.”
I’m silent except for chewing. Aidan drives to the office complex near the country club and parks there to eat his half-exploded meatball sub that didn’t quite survive the takedown. We decide to open the soda outside the car and it’s salvageable.
“What if Cain can get the body moving?” I ask. “Would you help me sneak him out then? He could be stuck in, um, the cabinet. The metal drawers, you know?” I gesture a bit because I’ve seen cleaned up bodies covered in sheets lying on rolling tables in morgues — on television, in movies, I know real life is different, but it’s got to be something similar even if it’s different.
“How would you get down there?” Aidan asks. “They have cameras. There are people everywhere to see you. The doors are locked. Ethan, no. Absolutely no way, I’m sorry. You just can’t, okay? We’re not doing that.”
When I shrug and murmur he frowns, Aidan looks over sharply when he waits at the light. “Ethan?” he prompts.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I just don’t know, okay? I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Yeah, no shit.
I snort softly and then have to rub my face to keep Aidan from seeing my smile. It shouldn’t be funny, but Cain’s snarky commentary is better than sulky silence. I wait in vain for him to say something more, like maybe how I can fix this for him.
Aidan turns into the neighborhood and winds his way toward my house at a slow crawl. “I don’t see your mom’s car,” he says.
“It could be in the garage.”
We stare at my house from the bottom of the drive. “I’ll go up. I’ll go get it,” Aidan says. We’ve been sitting with the engine running and the heater going full blast for a while. “Ethan, if I go get your laptop, do you promise to stay with the car?”
“What if I see my mom?”
Aidan hesitates with his hand over the keys before he unbuckles from his seat. “Sit here,” he says. “If you see your mom, then take my car at least. Don’t try to go on foot.”
I unclasp my seat belt while meeting his wide-eyed scared stare. We traded ghost stories once when camping, just some stupid tent in my backyard, with the house sitting empty so we thought we heard noises. I think that was probably the last time I saw Aidan look this scared, because if I was going inside to check then he’d come with me. He didn’t want to wait alone in the tent.
“I’ll go with you,” I say. “We should stick together.”
“Okay,” he says at once. He jerks the keys out of the car. He’s out the door quick and comes around to get me by the arm. “Let’s hurry though. You don’t want to get caught.”
“Yeah.” I stare at Aidan for too long thinking of how it felt to kiss him. The scar is bumpy under my tongue as I feel at it, chew nervously at the bitten-in red mark. I think about kissing Cain and feel heat rush into my face. “Thanks. I won’t run again, I’m sorry.”
“Sure,” Aidan says. “I’m on your side in this, you know.” He hesitates and then hugs me, he puts his arms around me and pulls me in tight. We stand there past the point of being awkward before Aidan remembers to let go. By the red-cheeked look that he doesn’t give me, I wonder if he’s thinking about kissing me as well.
The surge of anger I feel for Cain making this awkward makes me second guess helping him at all, but of course I poke my way into my quiet, empty house to get my laptop. Aidan washes his face at the sink and borrows clothes of mine to change into while I hastily pack. I get my laptop and charger, up-end my backpack on the bed and shove aside all my books to start cramming in socks and underwear, fresh shirts, my toothbrush and deodorant.
We end up running back to the car and laugh with giddy relief about it as Aidan starts up the car and floors it forward over the curb. Even the grinding metal-on-cement protest and extra bouncy turn of the wheel sets us into nervous giggles.
It doesn’t help I can hear Cain ask, What’s so fucking funny?
I tuck myself into the passenger seat and dig up a pair of knit gloves from what all I’d shoved into the backpack. I try to whisper since Aidan’s still chuckling softly as he spins up the radio as we make our getaway.
“Nothing, we’re okay. I have my laptop. I can find out where you are now.” I don’t get anything back from Cain, so I keep murmuring as I tug on the gloves and rub grateful warmth for my fingers. “I’ll look on the internet for you. I’ll find you there. I have more than enough information to dox you.”
“Ethan?” Aidan’s gone quiet, he’s swapped a relieved smile for a worried frown.
“Yeah,” I say quickly. “Sorry. Talking to Cain. Um, I need wifi, so –”
“Okay. Sure.” Aidan sighs but doesn’t say anything more. He keeps his eyes to the left before turning right out of the neighborhood again, he hates waiting at that light. He has to make two extra turns later to go south for the highway, but still he’d rather keep moving than risk sitting stopped for long. I tap my fingers impatiently on the lid of my laptop before lifting it open to at least logon.
Since Phobos found us at the bookstore, Aidan pulls into the parking lot of a shopping center across town with enough open wireless networks in range that I can connect to one and start looking. I tug off the gloves, and Aidan keeps the heater going now that the car’s already warmed up. On my laptop I have access to the sites my phone can’t find. Aidan sets the parking brake, locks the doors, and then unbuckles to scoot closer. He leans in to see over my shoulder.
Gruesome photos of motorcycle crash scenes scroll over the screen as I try to look for only the absolute most recent. I use lists of the best gore message boards on the dark web and check the newest posts on each. Aidan murmurs about how gross it is while I try not to look at anything too closely once skimming for pictures or a location, anything specific to narrow the results.
“No way,” Aidan says. He sees the link and description as I quickly click into the photo set to confirm. “Oh, no way.”
It’s a handful of crooked cell phone photos taken from the front end of the crash before the police arrived on the scene, before the ambulance arrived, the raw reality of my complicated world laid bare. It’s not even that brutal of a photo, no blood in sight, the bright splotch is a flashy red helmet with a blonde braided ponytail curled on the pavement, a small gold curl in a shaky picture. A horrible freak accident, this nightmarish truth of human fragility, the motorcycle driver decapitated and it’s no wonder Cain can’t move. I didn’t get him a body at all.